Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
